It looks like Hideo Kojima has made some big changes behind-the-scenes with his upcoming “action espionage” title, Physint. The game, which was announced as a PlayStation exclusive in 2024, is now in the hands of Asha Sharma’s Xbox, where Kojima will reportedly be a primary focus of her new vision for the platform. PlayStation says it “stepped away from the project” earlier this year, for undisclosed reasons.
“Creators have choices about where and how they bring their ideas to life”, says Asha Sharma in a post on the Xbox Wire. We’re honored that Kojima-san has chosen Xbox to work with Kojima Productions on Physint. His ambition to challenge conventions reflects the kind of creativity we want to support at Xbox.”
It was only last summer that Hideo Kojima stated he was working on Physint all by himself, so a move like this suggests the game has at least entered another stage of production. Earlier this year, Kojima noted that Kojima confirmed that casting, scans, and performance capture sessions would kick off in ‘late 2026’. We know from a report last year that the game was already casting actors, and had talent such as Charlee Fraser, Don Lee, and Minami Hamabe attached.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/D8uF8VQVT7I
“As confirmed earlier through our official channels, in mid-June of this year, we unexpectedly received notice from PlayStation Studios that they would cancel the Physint project,” says Kojima in a tweet. “Physint is an important project both to me personally and to Kojima Productions. Determined to keep the project alive, we have spent the last three months searching tirelessly for a new partner. In the course of seeking advice and pursuing negotiations with people across many fields, we found in Xbox a partner with whom we share a common vision for the future, and we have decided to team up with them once again. Please rest assured that development of Physint, our genre-defining action-espionage title, is ongoing and will continue moving forward.”
Kojima has previously made a big deal about the connection the game has to Columbia Pictures – notably, a division of Sony Interactive Entertainment sister company Sony Pictures. A shot of the studio, with a massive label for Physint emblazoned across its exterior walls – made up a large portion of the game’s reveal. Will this collaboration be put in jeopardy now, or will Kojima Productions move the cinematic and camera-work to somewhere Microsoft-owned?
Perhaps Kojima’s move to Xbox shouldn’t come as a surprise: back in July 2026, we learned Kojima’s other experimental in development game, OD, was reportedly safe from Microsoft cuts despite plenty of other studios and games facing the axe as part of Xbox’s controversial ‘reset’ initiative. Maybe Xbox was more willing to invest in the game than Sony, a company which is also reassessing its video game investments as profit margins start to stagnate. Herman Hulst, CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, has previously backed Kojima’s “next stage tactical espionage action game” publically, so whatever has soured between the two here is certainly noteworthy.
During Kojima Productions 10th anniversary livestream, the infamous creator noted that Physint is “just the start”, a vague statement that could potentially hint at Kojima seeing franchise potential in the series – something that Xbox is interested in, no doubt, as some of its legacy studios and brands suffer as a result of recent industry contractions.
In 2025, Kojima noted the game won’t be out for another “five or six” years, so if this is something Xbox is banking on, we can almost certainly expect it to be a marquee game for the as-yet-unrevealed Xbox Project Helix. The title was initially conceived during a period of sickness and surgery for Kojima, when thoughts of his own mortality convinced him to ‘change his priorities’ and go back to the action-espionage genre that helped make his name. Will the pivot back to the genre – and a partnership with an outwardly shaky Microsoft – pay off? We’ll have to wait and see.
